MacRumors Review: Apple TV

[Whistleway]

I know this is MR's first shot at the review business. So, I want to point out a few things and hope they are taken constructively.

1. There are some excellent reviews out on the web and MR has posted it as previous news discussions as well. Collating them and linking them in this review would this review that much more useful

2. Grading scale has a reference of what? What does A mean? Best of the class? Or Best of Apple's products? Does B- means there are products in the market that have a better score? If so what are they? and how do they rank?

3. Unbiased. Yeah right.. I quote ".. prevent me from giving it a glowing endorsement. .. preventing the product from shining. Despite this, one can always hope that Apple will continue to improve.." This borders fanboism. And loses a lot of credibility. I know we are all here because we all love apple. But if you say unbiased, atleast stick to it.

4. Grading scale doesn't make any sense. I presume MR is just going to review Apple products. Which Apple product is not Reliable or Sturdy? Almost all the products have the "limited" one year warranty. So every review MR is going to make on Apple's products has 25 points right off the bat??

I think MR missed a solid opportunity to provide reviews and establish itself a unbiased review of the product. If only this review called "a spade a spade" and come out with its scatching review and help MR readers rather than just another apologetic review, it would have been awesome. Oh well..

 

[curmi]

I now know why this product is such a dissapointment.

It's not that it's not mildly successful in what it does, it's simply for the FIRST time in maybe 7 years Apple has shipped a product which is not, regardless of cost, CLEARLY the best in class.

This is the shock that an entire generation of Apple users have never yet experienced - the idea that Apple could even remotely get it wrong, and I think it's what people are literally knocked out by. In no other area is Apple's unquestioned supremecy challenged - except Apple TV.

They need to fix this CRAZY QUICK even if it costs them MONEY!


Now in my mind Apple needs to do a few things to rectify this public perception immediately. This is no time to play ostrich. Apple acknowledge your greatness and concede the changes

1: Drop the price point by $100 so the 'feature set lack' becomes moot and this product becomes a 'must have - no brainer'. YES subsidise it like Sony and M$ do with the first gen of their consoles!.You will claw back the 'loss' with itunes store profit sales.! Think different!!
2: Drop a stunning OS update adding 5.1, a few 'online purchasable codecs' ie let the user pay $5 for Divx codec if they want it! Advertise this 'forthcoming feature set' NOW!Plug the holes even if it's just in a 'announcement of future updates' posting!.
3: Get some HD content on iTunes to make this product 'relevant'.

This is a crisis and Steve needs to get kicking some butt right now...

Finally someone puts in to words what many people have been trying to say. This is exactly it.

You are so right. When I think of Apple stuff, I think of cutting edge. Except with the Apple TV where I try and think of excuses.

Trouble is, I think Apple doesn't think they've got it wrong.

 

[MarcelV]

Maybe Apple did a bad job positioning the device, so people's expectations were out of line.

Apple never said it did more than it does. So, not sure where the other expectations came from. I agree with you, no support for 1080p is just academic. There isn't much content except for a few HD-DVD and BluRay titles, so not sure why people think it needs it at this time. Download 1080p for sure is not realistic at this time for bandwidth reasons.
As far as I know AAC support up to 5.1. I like to know how it was determined that there is no surround sound support. If it really doesn't support that, I agree that is a flaw, but they should be able to fix that with a software update.

For me, the box is a nice thing. In stead of my kids having a TV and a cable box in their own rooms, I can give them a TV and AppleTV. Much easier for them to control. My oldest doesn't get the remote control thing yet, so this is perfect. She knows how to work her Shuffle, so that's an easy step for her to make.

 

[petvas]

Dolby Surround is supported. Dolby Digital and DTS arent

This is Apple TV's biggest flaw but I think this device has so many advantages that I can live without the best sound.

My Dolby Digital Receiver has profiles that emulate real Dolby Digital signals. It is almost as good as real Dolby Digital.

I find that having my whole movie library on my Mac a great plus and since now I can also have the same resolution using the main H.2645 profile, I can drop using DVDs...

The Apple TV has also many more features:

• I will be able to play my home made videos
• Photos
• Music
• Convenience

 

[Carniphage]

Did some googling.

AVeL LinkPlayer
No HDMI - Stuttering playback No Wireless? $299

Buffalo PC-P3LWG
Rating 5.8 No HDMI - No 802.11n No Hard Drive - Bad Interface

Zensonic's Z500
Rating 5.4 - Lockups. Sounds better $400

Toshiba's RC-XS54
No wireless. $699! No one sellng

Any chance of finding one player which
A) Works without crashing or stuttering
B) Is cheaper
C) Has a hard drive.

 

[imacdaddy]

No need for a bigger HD

The point of the HD in ATV is not to store your TV shows and movies. The whole point for the ATV is to act as a mediator between the TV and Mac and stream content from the Mac to the TV. It acts as a cache.

Joshua.

I just bought the tv and after a few hours, I'm very impressed! I've got an older Samsung 42" Plasma which can display 1080i via component cable and the content I have looks great and my MP3 collection sounds great through my AV equipment. I use to hook up my iPod to the system to listen to music but I think over time, it had made my iPod battery worse.

As for people complaining about the lack of HD space, there's no need for a bigger HD. Example, I'm only using the tv HD to sync with photos only. The rest (vids, music, podcasts) are streamed from my iMac in another room...flawlessly! I intend to buy an external HD and hook that up to my Airport Extreme and take all the content off my iMac to it. I think this is Apple's intention and it makes perfect sense!

 

[BritinNC]

Initial impressions on Apple TV

I posted this out on the Apple Support Forum, but this seems to be a better place for it. In general Apple TV is pretty much what I expected, no more, no less. I would not say that I am blown away by it (as I expect to be by the iPhone) and I also thnk there are some things that it needs to do better. I may be one of the few people who was looking for a music AND video solution rather than a simply a video solution, so for others like me this may be useful.

The main reasons that I bought the Apple TV were:
- Wanted to avoid iTunes going out every time I used the microwave
- Wanted to be able to watch the limited video content I buy from ITMS on the TV without having to mess about connecting my iPod 5G
- Wanted to the more standard optical digital output (Toslink) so I could get a decent cable
- Wanted to be able to view home movies that never get watched on the TV
- Wanted to be able to put the kids movies in one place to avoid them getting lost and scratched

I would say that the Apple TV has met all these needs well. The seamless integration with iTunes is everything you'd expect even down to the fact that it syncs automatically when new content is added. So you can literally click on content in the ITMS and after a while sit at the TV and it's ready and waiting. The quality is very good although the TV shows are not encoded in widescreen format which is a disappointment (as well as the lack of 5.1 sound). Setup was straightforward but it took a while before I worked out how to get the right TV resolution so that I could see the setup menus on the TV.

Here are the things Apple needs to work on:
- The music interface is a real letdown compared to iTunes. You have no idea what the next song is going to be (a la party shuffle feature in iTunes). The on-screen information is limited and somewhat boring. It would be nice to be able to scroll to the lyrics like on the iPod. I would also like see say the last 5 songs that played and the next 5-10 songs with the ability to remove one from the list if I want to. To be honest I may go back to using iTunes and the Airport Express although the microwave issue bugs me to.
- Whenever you go to the main menu it stops the music. So if you have to change settings or look at some photos it effectively stops the playlist you were on and you have to start again. Again this should work like the iPod and you should be able to navigate around the system without it stopping the song.
- I'd like to see a second digital output. When Apple eventually offer 5.1 surround sound you may want to push the music through a seperate DAC than the video. Not an issue right now but will be in the future.
- I think that Apple has overdone the graphics. There is too much whizzing about the screen when the screensaver is on so it can be a real distraction if you are having a conversation with someone. Tone it down and make it more functional (such as the party shuffle concepts above).
- I would like to be able to control the Apple TV from iTunes if I want to. Sometimes I want to have more control than a 5 button remote can provide so I'd like to be able to use iTunes to control what is being played. Ideally, I'd also like to control Apple TV with the iPhone as well! I think these different components need to be seamlessly integrated so you can use whichever is the most convenient to do something. This is especially important for music. Using the front row interface is a step backwards from the iPod clickwheel and reminds me of the crummy interfaces on all those other music players. You simply cannot have too much music as it would take too long to find a song so only the playlist feature is really useful.

In summary, if you are getting the Apple TV primarily for music I'd suggest sticking with iTunes and AE, if you are more focused on the video the quality is great and the ease of use for watching iTunes content on the big screen is equivalent to the AE for music. However, I want it to be great at both, so Apple, get your thinking caps on and improve the music interface, otherwise a great product!

 

[thedonga]

Did some googling.


Any chance of finding one player which
A) Works without crashing or stuttering
B) Is cheaper
C) Has a hard drive.

sure, 1st why do you need a hard drive?
I have the avellink player...
It has a usb port which allows you to play movies off any usb device.
It has a network jack so I can stream from any computer on my network
It has a dvd player if you want to drop in a DVDR

Does it crash or stutter?
I have had no issues with this...neither has a friend of mine that has the same product.

It is cheaper.
The only codec it really won't play for me is wmv


Is this the perfect solution? no. Is it a better value than the appletv? I think so. So my original statement as to the appletv cannot be a perfect value is correct in my opinion.
The other option on the avellink front is the SRDVD-100U (branded under JVC now)

 

[amberashby]

I too at first thought the HD was too small, but then I started just streaming everything and it works just as good as playing content off of the HD. I'm using a new Airport Extreme N. Works great. Love my Apple TV so far.

Listening to music and having my entire library of 4000 pictures flying by in the awesome screen saver is worth the price alone

 

[roland.g]

The Photo navigation/lack of thumbnails like on an iPod needs to be fixed.

5.1 audio of course.

Genre organization for movies, or access to Movies folder via streaming rather than needing to have it in iTunes library.

Screensaver to start immediately with music, not 2 minutes for "preview" visualizer.

$249 40GB
$299 60 or maybe 80GB

 

[Avatar74]

Have much AC3-encoded audio on your computer, do you? I agree that it's unfortunate that it's not included, but seeing as though it doesn't play MPEG2 (obviously a conscious choice rather than an oversight), there's no reason to support surround sound at the moment--you can't pipe DVDs to it unmodified. If you want to watch lots of DVDs without getting up, get a DVD changer.

The hardware most certainly does. How are you planning on getting that content to the TV, though? Other than DVDs, what online content has AC3 surround audio in it?

Well, let me state a couple of things, but first know that I'm on your side of the argument...

Technically MPEG-2 playback doesn't assure AC-3 playback either. AC-3 is a separate bitstream independent of the MPEG-2 bitstream. Granted, they get muxed into a VOB stream in a professionally-encoded DVD, but strictly speaking the AC-3 is never actually contained in the MPEG-2 stream.

That being said, an MPEG-4 container *can* store AAC multichannel audio. Of course AAC is not AC-3. Solution? Dolby Digital Live.

Dolby Digital Live is apparently incorporated into some Intel HD Audio chipsets, of which the Apple Intel audio chipset may be one. Dolby Digital Live is designed to take other multichannel content, such as that found in an AAC stream, and transcode it on the fly to AC-3.

It's more than likely Apple already thought this through. They seem to have incorporated the necessary hardware and, if so, are fundamentally only a software update away from enabling Dolby Digital.

 

[Coleco]

The USB Jack

My prediction: Apple will introduce an Apple TV add on with a Blu-Ray or hybrid HD-DVD drive that plugs in via the USB port. It will be ultra-slim, but the same footprint as Apple TV for easy stacking. People that want the drive can buy it, people who want to stick with iTunes and regular DVDs are all set. Plus, all the content can be funnelled through Apple TV's outputs, occupying only one TV input (ideally the drive could be powered over USB too). This will be out by fall or summer for less than $300. Apple will be able to offer a hyper competitive price because it will begin offering similar drives in its Mac line.

No. 2 prediction: Netflix-like video "rental" downloads will be available later this year. Videos expire a week after their first play (or Apple TV sets a limit of 2-3 rental downloads available at a time and allows you to que up future downloads that come in once you check a movie for "return".

 

[imacdaddy]

Open the movie in Quicktime (Might need quicktime(pro))
Save As
(select reference movie)
You then get a tiny file - which looks like a MOV.
This MOV can be added to iTunes etc. Looks just like a regular MOV.

I'm really interested in this reference file you're talking about. How does this work?

I use to make reference streams for windows media files on a windows media server streamed for multicast streams.

 

[skinnylegs]

I got an Apple TV myself. I ordered it when it was announced, but wasn't overly excited by it. I knew what I was getting. An iTunes bridge for my TV. That being said, once I got it, I thought the sum of the parts was much better than I expected.

It was surprisingly fun to watch video content that I had, but never watched because it was on my computer. I also had a much bigger urge to buy more movies via iTunes and subscribe to some video Podcasts.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

it replaces the HD/DVD recorder ($500), the Blueray player ($600) and the HD Tv Decoder ($300) and takes up far less room and has less clutter. I would lay down in excess of $1200 for such a machine.

So would I but I'm not so sure there is a big enough market for such a device.

What I find amazing is the amount of people making TV into something it was never intended to be. It's been said a hundred times before but I'll say it again...... TV is a device that streams or syncs iTunes and iPhoto content from your host computer to your widescreen LCD. That's it....plain and simple. I pre-ordered an TV and it arrived last Wednesday. I have used it each and every day since it arrived and I forsee using it at least 3-4 days a week in the future. Not a bad value for $299. Heck, just yesterday some friends came over for a barbecue and I streamed my 80's playlist to my Bose sound system in the living room. I don't know much about codecs and stuff but it sounded damn good and everyone was duly impressed. I think I may even have "converted" a few of my friends. We also sat around and looked at pictures of my new grandson on my widescreen LCD. Brilliant! This is precisely why I bought an TV.

Frankly, I don't really care that much about streaming movies. If I want to watch a movie, I'll drop a DVD or HD-DVD in the player(s) that sit(s) right next to my widescreen LCD. I bought an Tv primarily for streaming/sync'ing my music, photos and home videos. As far as I see it, streaming of movies is just the icing on he cake. If, and when, the catalog of streamable (is that a word?) content matches Netlix's library then I will probably change my mind but that day isn't here yet.

Also, as long as we're talking honestly here, can we be honest? I think it's safe to say that those who are screaming about lack of file compatibility (movies and music not purchased via ITMS) are more than likely pissed off because they can't watch or listen to their pirated stuff via TV . DivX <for instance>? Are you kidding me? Who has a collection of DivX movies? I'll tell you who......people who "share" stuff via BT.

Great review!

 

[Transmogrified]

wireless

I was just wondering how difficult it would be for apple to extend the TV into a wireless base station as well. I guess this would be a logical step for it to progress into in the future. I'd buy one.. my airport express just died

 

[longofest]

The "Value" rating

I've heard a few complaints regarding how I attributed the Apple TV's value rating.

Mainly, the Apple TV got 10/10 because it is the cheapest device on the market for what it does. You can't find another device that has the feature set of the Apple TV and has such a low price point.

Yes, I was disappointed in the features, but I already had given it a low rating for that.

1. There are some excellent reviews out on the web and MR has posted it as previous news discussions as well. Collating them and linking them in this review would this review that much more useful

2. Grading scale has a reference of what? What does A mean? Best of the class? Or Best of Apple's products? Does B- means there are products in the market that have a better score? If so what are they? and how do they rank?

3. Unbiased. Yeah right.. I quote ".. prevent me from giving it a glowing endorsement. .. preventing the product from shining. Despite this, one can always hope that Apple will continue to improve.." This borders fanboism. And loses a lot of credibility. I know we are all here because we all love apple. But if you say unbiased, atleast stick to it.

4. Grading scale doesn't make any sense. I presume MR is just going to review Apple products. Which Apple product is not Reliable or Sturdy? Almost all the products have the "limited" one year warranty. So every review MR is going to make on Apple's products has 25 points right off the bat??

Many of your questions can be answered on our guide page. As to #3, note the preceding words made those comments make more sense (i.e. "it was good, but not great, and had some fatal flaws which prevents me from giving a glowing endorsement".). For #4, Reliability and lifespan is a very important aspect of any product, and I would be unduly biased AGAINST apple if I were to diminish its importance in the reviews. Remember, bias goes both ways (for and against).

That being said, I'm sure I wasn't perfect at killing off biased feelings, but then again, I'm human. So, I still appreciate your comments and will consider them the next time we do a review.

 

[imacdaddy]

I recommend you all download and look at this full screen. It will blow your mind. Gotta be among the worlds best movie trailers of all time. Absolutely amazing.
.

I just downloaded it and streamed it to my tv from my iMac. One word...awesome! I don't have any HD material and this is the first time my old Samsung 42" Plasma has experienced anything this sweet on its screen! It can handle 1080i. Thanks Multi!

 

[slffl]

Great review. For mac users like myself who have encoded everything in h.264 since day one, this is a great product. For others who for some reason have a bunch of Divx/Xvid, I guess they had better start transcoding

 

[Avatar74]

I recommend you all download and look at this full screen. It will blow your mind. Gotta be among the worlds best movie trailers of all time. Absolutely amazing.

What will blow your mind is when I tell you that I streamed this 720p trailer from a 933MHz G4 Quicksilver (Apple's minimum recommendation is a 1GHz G4, as per the TV manual), over an 802.11g network in an apartment building with steel framing and 10 nearby wireless base stations interfering with the signal and aside from one initial buffering delay it played through without a single skip or jitter.

I have a Sony WEGA XBR HDTV (34" CRT) and I have to say, I'm more than impressed with the 720p playback. I had some initial concerns about proper representation of the HD color gamut, but the Spidey trailer looks identical to every other instance of it... broadcast, HD, I'll even say pretty close in perceptible clarity to theatrical projection (taking into account the difference in display size). The color, clarity and contrast are stellar.

What disappoints me is that at the Apple Stores, their demo units are loaded with low resolution files worse than the 640x480 ones. Add to that the entry-level Bravia LCD TV's they're using in which even the menus look considerably worse than on my XBR (LCD's are considerably inferior to CRT's yet)... and you have a recipe for marketing disaster. If they do not fix this problem soon, they're not going to attract nearly the numbers of users they could if they had one floor demo unit with a kickass display and 720p demo content.

As it stands, I could sell more AppleTV's from my living room than they'll sell in all 4-5 stores in the Minneapolis area. But I guess that's not surprising with regard to retail. If you walk into most retail stores carrying HDTV's, the picture on the floor units is never calibrated and the source is almost never an actual HDTV feed (usually just SD cable in stretch mode).

But I do expect more from Apple Store retail... they've done every product launch pretty well thus far. They're risking blowing it on the most significant product to be released by Apple since the iPod.

 

[eenu]

I disagree. All Sets here have been sold here with HDMI and component for a few years. What you should have said is i have an old TV and as such i don't have these connections!

I bought a set mid 2005 and have HDMI. That is almost 2 years old now and it was by no means the first with these connections. The bigger pain in the ass here in the UK/Europe is the lack of iTMS content.

TVs are typically replaced in a 3-5 yr cycles in an average household. These connections have been around in the UK/Europe for a good 2-3 so it shouldn't be to far off when you need to replace your set and will gain these connections.

Everyone is saying it needs a TV with component or HDMI input.

In Europe, pretty much every TV has SCART and composite inputs. Component is very very rare here. Not sure about HDMI inputs.

However, HMDI to SCART converter cables are pretty common. My XBox came with a HDMI to SCART cable, which works fine on my ancient TV.

So, in Europe, people will probably just run the ATV with that cable. Still not sure why Apple thinks us europeans will buy it - there isn't much on Euro iTunes apparently for it, and also multi-lingual subtitles are pretty much a must here.

 

[skinnylegs]

I ripped a DVD (that I own) with Handbrake to MPEG 4. I imported it within iTunes and it plays back well in iTunes.

However.......

The movie does not show up on my Apple TV when I choose the streaming option and it does not export to the Apple TV HD when I choose the syncing option.

Suggestions?

 

[Hattig]

My prediction: Apple will introduce an Apple TV add on with a Blu-Ray or hybrid HD-DVD drive that plugs in via the USB port.

The Apple TV can decode 5mbps streams (which is a conservative figure because it can handle the 5.5mbps SpiderMan III trailer). I guess with optimisation (assuming it is using nVidia PureVideo functionality on the GPU) the hardware could in the future handle a little more - say 8mbps.

BluRay can provide a stream of up to 40mbps.

The decoding hardware would have to be 8 times faster to handle BluRay. There is just no way that the Apple TV in its current incarnation could handle it. The PS3 can handle it because of the Cell CPU (+nVidia RSX GPU) which outclasses the 1GHz Dothan + GeForce 7300Go of the Apple TV. The XBox360 can handle it because of its 3 core 3.2GHz PowerPC CPU and ATI GPU.

It's a nice idea though. Let's wait for AppleTV 2 first though, that will hopefully handle 1080p media.

 

[Cult Follower]

I am one who was skeptical from the beginning, but now I want to go out and buy one. And in the features section...it isn't meant to do everything...its like the iPod, simple and only the features you need.

 

[GadgetDon]

I1: Drop the price point by $100 so the 'feature set lack' becomes moot and this product becomes a 'must have - no brainer'. YES subsidise it like Sony and M$ do with the first gen of their consoles!.You will claw back the 'loss' with itunes store profit sales.! Think different!!

Absolutely not.

Here's the difference between what Sony and Microsoft do, and what Apple does.

The iTunes store exists to sell iPods (and now Apple TVs). They are a convenience for people who buy the nice profitable hardware, but it's no skin off Apple's nose if people find other ways to fill their devices. That's why Apple hasn't cracked down on the minimal iPod modding that happens and won't (I predict) crack down on the Apple TV modding that has already started.

On the other hand, Sony's consoles and Microsoft's consoles and Zune exist to sell media. Sony and Microsoft make their money off of the media sales (directly, or through license fees/royalties/kickbacks). When mods appear to allow people to put their own items on the devices, patches come down the line to stop people from doing it.

I just upgraded my hard disk to 120 GB. Frankly, once I'd seen how good the streaming was (wirelessly over 802.11n), the need wasn't really there, but I'm a geek so I must fiddle. It was pretty easy (once you ripped off the rubberized base, trying not to rip it). Other people are hacking it to support other video formats. Not my interest, my videos are all MP4 or H.264, either from Apple Store, from Podcasts, or ripped with Handbrake, but that's cool. There's some other potential hacks being discussed that do seem interesting. I don't want Apple to feel the need to stop it.

And the Apple TV has seriously impressed me. it's nice and compact and fits into my bedroom a/v system. The streamed video was smooth and looked good. It's going to make video podcasts far more practical. And the integration on the podcasts is very nice.

Yes, I could probably finagle a Mac Mini to do the same (would have to run Cat-5 to the bedroom though, 802.11g wouldn't cut it), but with a lot more finagling and editing.

One complaint I do have that hasn't been mentioned here is that the Movie Trailers are only listed Alphabetically. In the iTunes Movie Store, I can quickly check to see what new trailers are up. Not so easy on the AppleTV

Would I like more features added through software updates and USB plugins? Absolutely. The sound interface for photos is not obvious. I didn't even realize you could pick the music playlist for a while, and my slideshow of pictures from a trip to the Great Sand Dunes was accompanied by a chapter from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

In features...movie rental, HD content interest me. I'd also love to see a Blu-Ray hardware add-on. A DVR add-on, from Apple or working with EyeTV, would be a great addition though wouldn't work well with my satellite receiver's built-in receiver.

 

[GadgetDon]

I ripped a DVD (that I own) with Handbrake to MPEG 4. I imported it within iTunes and it plays back well in iTunes.

However.......

The movie does not show up on my Apple TV when I choose the streaming option and it does not export to the Apple TV HD when I choose the syncing option.

Suggestions?

What settings do you use? I use the MP4 file format, MPEG-4 Video/AAC Audio codec, Framerate same as source, encoder FFmpeg, and under Picture Settings I reduce to maximum width of 640 (so it also plays on the iPod). Everything I've ripped comes across fine.